Full Details
2014 Hugo Award Nominees
The 2014 Hugo Award nominees have been announced. The noms in the Novel category are:
- Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie (Orbit US/Orbit UK)
- Neptune’s Brood, Charles Stross (Ace / Orbit UK)
- Parasite, Mira Grant (Orbit US/Orbit UK)
- Warbound, Larry Correia (Baen Books)
- The Wheel of Time, (entire series) Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (Tor Books)
See the full list of noms in all categories on the official Hugo Award site.
So, it’s the entire Wheel of Time series that is up for the best novel. The Hugo rules allow a series to be eligible after the final volume has been published and as long as none of the books in the series were nominated individually. The argument is that it’s one long continuous story which is the same reasoning that lead to Blackout and All Clear being nominated as a single volume. Interesting. Will the legions of Jordan/Sanderson fans out there carry the award for them?
What do you think of this crop of nominees? Anything strike your fancy?
2013 Hugo Awards Announced (Live Blog)!
We are live at the 2013 Hugo Award ceremony, where the committee are reporting a solid ballot turnout. The Grand Ballroom here in the Rivercenter at San Antonio is so full, even nominees are being forced to <gasp> sit next to someone! We’re live blogging the results, so refresh this post to get fresher and fresher results…that is, unless you decide to watch Breaking Bad and then get your results in one fell swoop, later. I know I was torn between those options, and I’m at the con!
Better yet, watch the ceremony on U-Stream.
8:22: The Big Heart Award, presented by the impressive superfan David Kyle, went to Tom Veal, who promptly pointed out that he had been given the wrong plaque. This, of course, proves Tom’s worthiness. Congrats to him, and thanks for all the hard work!
8:33: A rarely given Chairman’s Special Award was presented by astronaut Katie Coleman is describing her time in space. She’s here to announce the rarely given special committee award, which went to Stanley Schmidt for his work on Analog Magazine. Money quote: “He kept the science in sci-fi”
8:40: The Seiun Awards, established in 1970, is the Japanese Hugo. It literally means “nebula”. The award for best translated short story went to Paolo Bacigalupi, for “Pocketful of Dharma”. The best translated novel award went to John Sclazi‘s The Android’s Dream (it was his second Seiun Award).
8:46: The Hugo ceremony’s tradition of listing fans, authors, publishers and artists who are no longer with us is unfortunately long.
8:54: “I think the Campbell Award doth protest too much,” says MC Paul Cornell, about how everyone points out that the Campbell is not a Hugo. I usually find myself pointing out that it is not the same as the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.
8:58: The winner of the Campbell Award for Best New Writer goes to Mur Lafferty, who graciously pointed out that past Campbell nominees (such as George RR Martin and Lauren Beukes) went on to careers just as illustrious as the winners.
9:03: The Hugo trophy base has been unveiled:
Vincent Villafranca, the base designer, is on stage to explain the concept. I love this base. I think it might be my favorite. “It depicts an astronaut and some aliens sitting around reading some books ” They are hand-cast in bronze.
9:10: “We now come…to the Hugo Awards themselves.”
9:12: The Best Fan Artist Award goes to Galen Dara.
9:15: The Best Fan Writer Award goes to Tansy Rayner Roberts, who was unavailable ot accept in person.
9:19: The Best Fancast Award goes to SF Squeecast, xurprising precisely nobody. Seanan McGuire: “I attended my first Worldcon when I was fourteen,” and “this is an in-your-face for all those people I went to high school with.”
9:23: SF Squeecast has officially withdrawn themselves from consideration of future awards.
9:26: The Award for Best Fanzine goes to SF Signal. Congrats, guys! “I’m totally tweeting this.” They, too are recusing themselves from future awards in this category.
9:32: “There’s a reason why semiprozine sounds like Semiprozine sounds like something you’d ask your doctor for”
9:34: The award for Best Semiprozine goes to Clarkesworld.
9:40: The winner for Best Professional Artist is John Picacio. His response? “Well, hello, Texas.” He ended his speech with with a political statement about the status of women in Texas. I assume he means HB2.
9:48: The Best Editor, Long Form Award goes to Patrick Nielsen Hayden.
9:50: The Best Editor, Short Form Award goes to Stanley Schmidt, who is having an extraordinarily good night. “Copy and paste the acknowledgements from previous speech.”
9:53: “We now come to The Best Doctor — I mean, Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.”
9:55: We now get to see all of the nominated clips, which, of course, is a Whofest.
9:59: And the winner is Game of Thrones, ending the Whovian monopoly! Also, has George R. R. Martin lost weight?
10:04: Paul Cornell just confessed that he voted for Hugo last year, so that Hugo could win a Hugo, thus creating a singularity.
10:10: The winner for Best Presentation, Long Form, is The Avengers. Stephen H. Silver is accepting for Joss Whedon.
10:11: Oh, boy, Silverberg is hitting the stage. That means you won’t be hearing new news for a few minutes, now…
10:17: This year’s stall tactic consisted of Silverberg reading a transcript of the first schtick he did in 1965. Brilliant.
10:20: The Best Graphic Story Award goes to Saga, Volume One, written by Brian K. Vaughn, illustrated by Fiona Staples (Image Comics).
10:24: The Best Related Work Award goes to Writing Excuses Season Seven, Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Howard Tayler and Jordan Sanderson. “You’re out of excuses. Now, go write.”
10:27: “Kij [Johnson], you and George R. R. Martin should really make some television together. It’d solve the population crisis.”
10:28: The Best Short Story Award goes to “Mono no Aware”, by Ken Liu (The Future is Japanese, VIZ Media LLC)
10:31: The award for Best Novelette goes to “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi”, by Pat Cadigan (Edge of Infinity, Solaris). She stood behind the podium for a while, expecting to wake up in her bed at any moment.
10:36: The Best Novella Award goes to Brandon Sanderson, for The Emperor’s Soul (Tachyon Publications).
10:42: And Best Novel goes to….John Scalzi, for Redshirts! Congrats to him, and to all of the folks at Tor.
10:45: “I’m at the convention of misfit toys.” – Scalzi
10:46: On the heft of the trophy: “It’s very heavy, but also light on my heart.” – Scalzi
2013 Hugo Voter Packet
The 2013 Hugo Voters Packet is now available for members of LoneStarCon 3, the 71st annual Worldcon convention. The packet is “an electronic package of nominated works graciously made available to voters by nominees and their publishers.”
From the LoneStarCon website:
The 2013 Hugo Voter Packet is available to Supporting, Attending, Military and Young Adult members of LoneStarCon 3 to help inform them about the works under consideration before voting. The packet will remain available until voting closes on Wednesday, July 31, 2013 at 11:59pm CDT.
Members can login here. You will need your name (as recorded in the LoneStarCon 3 membership database) and your unique Hugo PIN to access the Hugo Voter Packet content. PIN reminders will be sent out at regular intervals during the final ballot period. Instructions on how to recover lost or forgotten PINs can be found on the download page.
Not going to attend Worldcon? No problem, you can still get in on the action. You can sign up as a Supporting Member for $60 and get the packet – valued way more than $60 by the way – and you’ll be eligible to vote. That’s a pretty damn good deal and less than you would have to pay for just the novels alone.
Get to reading and get to voting!
2013 Hugo Novellas Unbound!
UPDATE: Click here to find the short story nominees, and here for the novelettes.
2nd UPDATE: Aliette de Bodard’s entry, On a Red Station, Drifting, has now been released as an ebook for a much lower price. See details updated in the article, below:
Last year, when we posted the 2012 Hugo nominated novellas, most of them were available for free. One exception was Mira Grant (A.K.A.: Seanan McGuire)’s “Countdown,” which sold for $2.99. I said, at the time:
This, I think, is the beginning of a trend. Shorter stories are starting to sell on Kindle at less-than-novel prices. Even though the other books on this list are free, I think the trend to charge small amounts for novellas, novelettes, and even short stories means that otherwise inaccessible stories will have a longer shelf life, giving us more to read.
Well, it seems Ms. McGuire’s experiment has spurred more of them. No nominee is available for free. Sanderson’s “The Emperor’s Soul” is the second cheapest, selling for $4.99 on Amazon. The rest cost even more, with only a portion of Jay Lake’s story being made available for free. The result of these experiments is relative chaos: prices ranging from $2.99 (and instantly available) to $14.85 (and available via snail-mail only).
Considering Hugo defines a novella as being up to 40,000 words, I don’t mind paying a Mira Grant (or even a Brandon Sanderson) price to read one. Considering we’re used to reading nominated stories for free, transitioning to a much higher price than $5 seems to stretch reason. For that reason, I’m still betting on Seanan McGuire’s strategy being the most sensible. Only time will tell.
Of course, LoneStarCon 3 (Worldcon 71) members get digital copies of all novels, novellas, novelettes, and short stories for FREE. Even if you don’t plan on attending Worldcon this year, you can get a supporting membership for only $60, and you’ll be able to vote.
If membership isn’t in the cards this year, here are this year’s novella links:
- “After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall” by Nancy Kress (Tachyon Publications) is available on Kindle for $7.69 or in paperback for $11.09.
- “The Emperor’s Soul” by Brandon Sanderson (Tachyon Publications) is available on Kindle for $4.99, and paperback for $8.59.
- “On a Red Station, Drifting” by Aliette de Bodard (Immersion Press)
appears to be the only nominated novella not to be available electronically (so you’ll have to cough up $14.85 for the hardback),is now available on Kindle for $2.99, by popular demand! Also, an excerpt may be found for free here. - “San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats” by Mira Grant (aka Seanan McGuire) (Orbit) is just $2.99 on Kindle, as well as Nook and Google Books.
- “The Stars Do Not Lie” by Jay Lake (Asimov’s, Oct-Nov 2012) can be partially read for free, but you must purchase a copy of Asimov’s to read the conclusion. I know of no way to get an electronic copy of this back issue (only current issues can be purchased digitally).
As always, we rely on you, our readers, to let us know if you find a cheaper way to read any of the above novellas. If that changes, we will update this article and let you know by tweet (@WWEnd). Links to all of the award winning books are, as always, available through BookTrackr.
Now you have no excuse when someone asks you who you think should win. Get to reading!
2013 Hugo Novelettes, Unveiled!
Last week, we told you where to read the Hugo nominated short stories for free, and we felt a little down about it, because there were only three of them. At least the authors each have a 1 in 3 chance of winning, right? Still, it couldn’t have taken you long to read those stories, so we wrote this follow up on all of the novelettes that were recently nominated for the 2013 Hugos.
Before we go there, let us (yet again) remind you that a LoneStarCon 3 (A.K.A. Worldcon 2013) membership will grant you digital copies of most or all of the five novels, five novellas, five novelettes, and three short stories. We highly recommend you attend the con, of course (mainly so you can visit our booth!), but even if you can’t make it to San Antonio, you can get a supporting membership for only $60… far less than the cost of buying all those stories and books. Plus, you get to vote (hence allowing you to say “I didn’t vote for *that* one!” if don’t like who won).
Still, it’s possible that you don’t care to vote, or can’t afford the cash, or (as is the case with me) can’t wait for the Worldcon committee to release the reader packets. Well, at least for novelettes (and short stories) you need wait no longer. We looked far and wide to find the nominated novelettes, and while they are not all free, most of them are. They are as follows:
- The Boy Who Cast No Shadow, by Thomas Olde is available (for free!) in both .epub and .mobi formats (both formats are DRM free, too).
- Fade to White, by Catherynne Valente can be read on the Clarkesworld web site for free. If you want it on your eReader, you’ll have to copy and paste it into a .txt file and transfer it. You can download the audiobook here.
- The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi, by Pat Cadigan, does not seem to be available anywhere for free. It is part of an anthology entitled Edge of Infinity, which costs $8.09 in dead tree format, and $6.29 digitally. At least you can read it right away (and have a bunch more stories to boot).
- In Sea-Salt Tears, by the terribly popular Seanan McGuire, is available for free in PDF, Mobi, and ePub formats, which makes her the author who did the best job of giving us all the (DRM free) formats we want. Thanks, Ms. McGuire!
- Rat-Catcher, also by Seanan McGuire is the one story that isn’t immediately available. The anthology in which it appears doesn’t seem to be online at all, even at cost. You get get it in dead tree format for $13.60, which is a little steep if you only want the one story. We’ll keep our eye out for a sign that this story might be released online.
If there are any updates on these novelettes, I will redact this blog post, and I’ll tweet that I have done so (@wwend). If any of YOU know where The Girl-Thing or Rat-Catcher can be had for a lower cost, please tell us in the comments sections, so I can update this list.
Next up: Novellas!
2013 Hugo Short Stories, Unleashed!
Perhaps the most popular blog series WWEnd had last year were the ones that covered free Hugo nominated content. With the recent announcement of the 2013 nominees, we are, once again, covering nominated works, including short stories, novelettes, novellas, graphic novels and related works. In the coming weeks, we will be looking in every nook and cranny to determine where you can find all of the stories that you should read in order to have an informed opinion on who should win. Here is what we have found (so far) on the short stories.
First, we highly recommend LoneStarCon 3 (A.K.A. Worldcon 2013) membership. If you can’t afford an attending membership of $200 (as of this writing, installment plan available) or can’t make it out to San Antonio, the supporting membership is only $60, and it will include digital copies of (most, if not all of) the novels, novellas, novelettes, and short stories for your perusing. The novels alone would cost more than $60 to buy. If history is any indication, the reading packets will be out by May.
The first thing you’ll notice about this year’s nominees is the dearth of short stories. This is apparently because of a clause in the WSFS constitution that states:
No nominee shall appear on the final Award ballot if it received fewer nominations than five percent (5%) of the number of ballots listing one or more nominations in that category, except that the first three eligible nominees, including any ties, shall always be listed.
I’m not sure what to think of that rule. It seems to me that it might discourage diversity in the nomination process. Well known authors are more likely to get a larger concentration of votes, and excluding the fourth and fifth place nominees just because the top three authors are hogging the votes seems counter-intuitive. Wouldn’t you want to expose more authors rather than fewer?
At any rate, all three nominated short stories can be read for free online right now. I also included the original publication dates, in case you just want to go out and buy the original book or back issue:
- “Immersion”, by Aliette de Bodard was nominated for Nebula and BSFA awards, so has been online for a while, now. It was first published by Clarkesworld in their June 2012 issue. Enhance your daily commute by listening to the audio version, downloadable here.
- “Mantis Wives”, by Kij Johnson is also available in the pages Clarkesworld, in their August 2012 issue. The audio version of the story is available here.
- “Mono no Aware”, Ken Liu was published as part of an anthology by VIZ Media, engilted The Future is Japanese. To read it, go to click on the “Look inside” preview feature from the book’s Amazon listing (or just click here) and scroll down to the first full story. No, it may not be the most convenient method for accessing the story, but you could always buy the anthology (the Kindle version is only $3.99). If the publisher makes the story available elsewhere online, we’ll update this page.
It’s a tad disappointing to see such a short list, but maybe it’s enough to keep you occupied until we publish the novelettes list (coming soon). On the bright side, it won’t be hard to read every nominated short story, so that part of the ballot will be easy for you to fill out.
Next up: Novelettes!
2013 Hugo Award Nominees!
The 2013 Hugo Award nominees have been announced! In the Best Novel category the nominees are:
- 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)
- Blackout by Mira Grant (Orbit)
- Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)
- Redshirts by John Scalzi (Tor)
- Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed (DAW)
Congrats to all the nominees! For the full list of nominees in all categories see the press release on The Hugo Awards official website.
What do you think of this year’s crop of noms? Anthing stand out for you? Mira Grant (Seanan McGuire) keeps rolling with her Newsflesh series having been nominated for all three books in the trilogy.
